


Robbing Peter

by ultimaromanorum



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen, semi-ironic retaliative heist planning, swashes are buckled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:33:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultimaromanorum/pseuds/ultimaromanorum





	Robbing Peter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skeiler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeiler/gifts).



The stable yard was filled with the low hum of muttering voices and the asymmetric dance of small knots of whisperers that always accompanies the spread of rumor.  Three of the Inseparables — Aramis had not yet showed himself, which was odd, because everyone was punctual on payday — sat apart from the slowly churning crowd of musketeers at the old trestle table near the foot of the staircase.  Athos absently filed a rusty patch on his sword-blade; D’Artagnan gouged at the edge of the tabletop where countless leather-armored forearms had worn it shiny; Porthos vociferated.

“Unpardonable negligence— shameful— just what exactly do they expect us to do!”

Aramis was sidling in under the carriageway, apparently hoping to join the milling crowd unseen.Catching sight of his friends, however, he squelched rapidly across the muddy yard.

“Something going on?I could hear Porthos halfway down the street.”He slid onto the bench beside Athos.

“Is something going on?” howled Porthos.“Where have you been?Something damn well is going on.You’d better bet something’s going on.Payday’s off: we’re all on half-pay for the next month.”

Aramis squinted at him.“Nonsense.Treville can’t just put us all on half-pay for no reason.That’s not how pay works.”

“It is if somebody robs the strongbox”, said D’Artagnan gloomily.

————

“It wasn’t the cardinal,” Athos was saying.“It’s too straightforward by half.”

They were crammed in all together round a too-small table in the back corner of Les Moutons Noirs, half-concealed behind a pillar.This is generally the surest way for any group of whisperers to draw attention to themselves; however, the wineshop was dark, low-ceilinged, and smoky, and whisperers did not stand out.

D’Artagnan tossed back the last of his wine.“Of course it wasn’t the cardinal.Look, it doesn’t actually matter if it was the cardinal.What does matter is that everyone will be quick to blame the cardinal, or at least the Red Guard.”

“So what are you saying?”Porthos traced 

“I’m suggesting we rob Peter to pay Paul.  Since everybody already believes it was the Cardinal, it'll be a great boost for morale.  And it’s all the royal treasury, after all.There won’t be anything he can pin on us.”

“Not if we move it into Treville’s strongbox, anyway.We can’t get caught with it on us.”

“That should be all right.”Porthos was refilling their glasses.“It isn’t burglary if you break in to leave money.”

“Before we go any further, we need to know what the full sum drawn for each month’s wages is.Our bandits must have got no more than half.We’re going to have to find ourselves some new clothes.I’ll need Athos’s rooms for that.Once we’ve got everything together we can draw up a more coherent plan.”

————

“But I only have half the rent!”

Constance buried her face in the faded linen dishtowel.“There’s more to this, isn’t there, D’Artagnan?There’s always more to it with you.”

“Not my fault this time, as god’s my witness.”D’Artagnan sidled backwards out of towel-slap range.“Treville’s strongbox turned out not to have been so strong.”

“Monsieur Bonacieux isn’t going to believe you.”

D’Artagnan sidled further backwards but was brought up short as his head struck the mantelpiece.“No of course not.That’s why you’re going to help us.”

“As sentences go, I think I like ‘that’s why you’re going to help us’ even less than ‘but I only have half the rent’.What do you want me to do?”

————

They didn’t have long to wait for Treville to be out of his office: by the time they had returned from the wineshop he had already set off to complain of the theft to his Majesty.It would not do for Aramis to be caught rummaging in Treville’s papers a second time, they had decided, and Athos would be needed to hold him in conversation in the yard if he returned inopportunely, and so it was that Porthos found himself stumping up the back stairs trying to be as obtrusive as possible.Furtivity would be his undoing.

He boldly pushed the office door open and made straight for the desk.He’d seen the tall calfbound pay ledger a hundred times, and it never moved from its place at Treville’s left hand.

Only this time, it had moved.Of course, he’d taken it with him.

There had to be some other sort of receipt.The hutch behind the desk was neat, but Treville was not the sort of man to label his pigeonholes, nor was he the kind to throw away a perfectly good scrap of paper.Porthos glanced over his shoulder.  He’d already been here a bit too long.Catching sight of a treasury seal, he grabbed the whole bundle from the third hole and stuffed it down his doublet.

The wooden stairs resounded as he stumped back to the yard.

————

“Do you think he’ll notice?”

They sat one to each corner of Porthos’s bed, sorting through the bundle.

“Yes, but he’ll think it was the cardinal’s spies.”

————

Early the next morning, Constance Bonacieux staggered up to Porthos’s lodgings under an unwieldy bundle of fabric, shepherded by D’Artagnan, who was busy envisioning mistress, disguises, and himself tumbling head over heels down the murderously steep flight of stairs.At the top, he hastily reached round her to open the door as she blundered precariously forward.

Constance flung the lot down unceremoniously in the center of the tiny room.

Aramis whistled.

“How in—”

“Easy,” said Constance, puffing a little.“All the wine D’Artagnan could afford, plus the old jealous husband trick.”

Athos squinted at them.“You don’t mean to tell us that these are real Red Guard uniforms?”

“Taken off real Red Guards.”

“All together or one at a time?”

“What an impertinent question.I also found out that they get paid in two days, and that the strongbox is in the clerk’s office on the second floor.”Constance shook the wrinkles out of a magnificent red-lined black cloak.“Now, can any of you boys sew?”

Three accusing fingers were leveled at Aramis.

“Excellent.I brought pins.”

————

Some six hours later, dressed in the hastily-fit uniforms, they lurked in an archway up the street from the Red Guard barracks.The guard should change any minute now, Constance had said before taking off down the alley to position herself beneath the clerk’s window.

Soon there were a couple of strokes of a bell, and a trickle of Red Guards began to issue from the porte cochere. They stepped out of the arch.

In the courtyard no one took any notice of them.D’Artagnan, who had lagged somewhat behind the others, sat down on the step as the Porthos, Athos, and Aramis strolled up the stairs and into the building.

At the end of a narrow, half-paneled hallway was a heavy oak door with a card sign on it.They made straight for a narrow bench set against the wall to one side, passing another guardsman, who likewise took no notice of them.

They sat down on the bench.

They waited.

———

Constance Bonacieux wheeled the borrowed laundry cart up under the clerk’s window, slouched against the wall, and took out a rosary.

————

The heavy oak door opened ponderously to reveal a small man in rusty black and a perfectly starched drawn-work soft ruff.He looked round irritably and pushed out into the corridor.

“I’ll be with you gentlemen in a minute.Somebody hasn’t brought the post up.”

He marched off down the corridor, his wooden heels clacking against the floorboards.The moment he was out of sight, Athos rose and slid into the office.

————

Out in the street, Constance Bonacieux heard the window sash raised.She ducked as a leather bag hurtled down into the laundry cart from above.Athos put his head out the window and nodded.

————

Athos was back out in the corridor long before there was any sign of the clerk’s return.He resumed his seat on the bench beside Porthos as a hullabaloo broke out outside.

“D’Artagnan,” mouthed Aramis.

As one they sprang up and sprinted for the far end of the corridor.Bursting through the door, they screeched to a halt on the portico.  D’Artagnan was backed up against the far left pillar by a belligerent, rather hung-over guardsman who was waving a parrying dagger under his nose.  The guardsmen who had been about in the yard had paused in their work to watch the fun.  


“It was you!I’d know you anywhere.”

D’Artagnan slowly raised his hands.“By your own account you were drunk as several judges, and I put it to you again that you are completely mistaken.”

The guardsman persisted.“Does anybody else here know this man?I don’t know him.”

Porthos made as if to step forward but Aramis put a hand out to keep him back.D’Artagnan edged round the pillar away from the guardsman until he could see his three friends.Athos made a very faint nod towards the porte-cochere.

“I don’t think I know him,” said another guardsman as he unsaddled a horse.“Who is he?”

"He's the one who robbed us!  Him and the lady, although I don't see the lady.  For god's sake, he's wearing Armand's doublet!"

“GO!” bellowed Athos, and they plunged headlong down the stairs across the courtyard.D’Artagnan punched his guardsman squarely on the nose and took off after them.

———— 

A pile of red and black cloaks and doublets lay higgledy piggledy at the end of the alley before a locked iron grille that gave into the street beyond.The watch officer poked at it with his sword.

”I wonder what that was all about." Privately he reflected on a future that involved him, alone, making a report to his Eminence. "We've got to find them. Return to the barracks and I'll organize a patrol." 

———— 

M. de Treville returned from an audience at the palace to find the pay strongbox standing open, a knotted and sealed leather bag where nothing should be. He shut and bolted it, and sat down to write out a receipt.

 

 


End file.
